History & Lore

Hundreds of sunny yellow daffodils line the edge of busy Route 2/4 south of Prince Frederick, seemingly popping up out of nowhere. Brilliantly announcing spring’s arrival, the daffodils blooming along the woodland’s edge are neither naturalized nor deposited will-nilly by bulb gathering critters. Nor are these daffodils escapees of an old garden; there is no house in the vicinity and besides, escapees don’t line themselves up in such an orderly fashion.

The story of 14-year-old William Ross of Annapolis reads like an adventure straight out of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Late one winter night, William flees a life of hardship to hop a passing ship and begin a new life in the West Indies.
Great stuff, until you read closer: William is a slave fleeing not for adventure but for his life.

Dowell Road bisects a strip of land sandwiched between Back and Mill creeks in Solomons. Past new homes under construction, the road runs out of asphalt. There a hard-packed dirt road parallels sidewalks leading nowhere, crumbling foundations with no buildings to support and rusty fire hydrants with nothing to protect. In the middle of these ruins sits a long-empty swimming pool.

Point 1: Why Are Calvert’s Cliffs Exposed?
The Miocene epoch of geology lasted from 23 to 5.3 million years ago. The middle Miocene was a time of high sea levels worldwide. The fact that we have these marine sediments exposed today, above present sea level, partly reflects that sea levels are generally down from what they were.

Long, long ago before there were packaged turkeys waiting to be cooked for Thanksgiving — or the Thanksgiving holiday at all — Native Americans hunted their food. Mayo Elementary School first-grader Daniel Kraus learned that lesson firsthand when he laid hands on an ancient Native American arrowhead.
A day of family bonding turned up a discovery that linked Daniel, and the Kraus family, with an ancient past.